Episode 17 appears to address only the major themes of TP3, while I believe 18 sets the stage for the next season, if Showtime approves it. As opposed to the surreal overly pleasant ending of Blue Velvet, in Cooper's desire to set all things right in the world, he inadvertently changes reality for himself, Diane, and Laura.
At the end of E17, Doppelcooper has been sent back to the black lodge to endure an eternity of being consumed by fire, Killer Bob has been defeated, another Dougie is created and is reunited with his family, and Cooper who has come out of his stupor is reunited with Diane.
Yet, all is still not right with the world - the scar of Laura's murder and all of the events that followed remains, and Cooper in his boldness and knowledge of the Black Lodge physics decides to go back in time to save 18 year old Laura from being murdered in 1989 with the help of Phillip Jeffries' time portal. While he is able to guide her away from joining Leo, Jacques, and Ronette for their ill fated night together, as he leads her to the White Lodge portal, the Judy frogmoth entity kidnaps Laura and drops her in a parallel reality.
Hence, Cooper convinces Diane to venture with him to the alternate reality, assuming that he will find Laura and reunite her with her mother. They are both aware though that the transition may alter them as individuals and their relationship.
Cooper and Diane emerge on the other side, and already they are both somber and relate to each other less. At the motel, Cooper has become more like his doppelganger and by the next morning, Diane who refers to herself as Linda, no longer recognizes Cooper/Richard and leaves. Some residual aspects of Cooper's persona remains, yet we see his car and the motel have changed, and he acts rather peculiarly at the diner.
When he finally finds Laura at a home in Texas adjacent to a power line pole with the number 6, the Black Lodge Entity conduit, she has aged appropriately, though she has a completely different identity and past as Carrie. Strangely, he dismisses finding a man with a gunshot to the head, much like Jeffrey found the grizzly murder scene in Blue Velvet.
The presence of an alternate reality is reinforced by the "Palmer House" being occupied by a different family, though some hints of the prime reality remain. The Chalfonts, who are spiritual placeholders, owned the house previously. Laura also finally hears the voice of her mother Sarah calling her, and is frightened by the overlap of her previous identity and life.
There are many elements from Lynch's previous movies here, such as the blurred relation between dreams and reality, shifting identities, and driving at night on long stretches of lonely dark highways to an unknown destination.
Overall, I'm a bit disappointed with the series as a whole. I expected Lynch to explore more themes and mysteries pertaining to the other characters. Instead, given his complete artistic and financial freedom, we see Lynch overindulging in overly drawn out conversations and scenes in which nothing particularly happens. I think he focused more on setting abstract feelings rather than straightforward dialogue and content. Nonetheless, I'm glad he expanded the TP universe and incorporated aspects of his previous films, as a basic reboot of the original Twin Peaks would not have been groundbreaking.
>>acts rather peculiarly at the diner<<
In hindsight, the dead giveaway was the coffee. He accepts it with no pleasure or feeling of any kind. Even bad coffee would elicit some polite perplexity from the Coop we know and love. Even DougieCoop showed a primordial affinity with coffee.
As obvious as it seems now, I admit this only really hit me later. At the time, I attributed his strange behavior to being brokenhearted (with a significant dash of "confused") over losing Diane and seeing the strange names in her letter. He seemed out-of-sorts because the world had changed on him. It took me a while longer to realize he had changed too. But he had, most definitely.
Good thoughts all around.
And this is my other gripe with this ending .. why does he feel he needs to make this right?? Laura's death was not his doing .. and by changing the past cooper doesn't realizes the consequences that changing the past to that extreme does to the future ??
The butterfly effect?? That doesn't raise any flags with Cooper ?? He seems like a pretty intelligent person and it just doesn't seem to make sense to me
The butterfly effect?? That doesn't raise any flags with Cooper ?? He seems like a pretty intelligent person and it just doesn't seem to make sense to me
I feel that too. But if I wanted to take the other side, I'd say "The Return" has established Laura as more than one girl who was abused and murdered. We seem to be told that saving her would be striking some larger blow for goodness against evil. And if that were the case, wouldn't it be worth giving up some of your own little comforts (your friends, your true love... your identity) to win that battle? If you're someone as good (and adventurous) as we know Cooper to be, it's worth it. He tells them all in the sheriff's station, very seriously, that "some things will change." He knows a little of what he's getting into. If this works, he thinks his own sacrifice will be worth it (and presumably no one else will know the difference).
But if it doesn't work? If it only leads to a different kind of darkness and entropy? Whew. That's heavy stuff. And that's where we are.
I don't know it still doesn't make any sense to me what so ever .. your a human being a man .. at least that's what I thought cooper was .. now I'm not even sure
And this is my other gripe with this ending .. why does he feel he needs to make this right?? Laura's death was not his doing .. and by changing the past cooper doesn't realizes the consequences that changing the past to that extreme does to the future ??
The butterfly effect?? That doesn't raise any flags with Cooper ?? He seems like a pretty intelligent person and it just doesn't seem to make sense to me
A lot of people are pointing this out. I don't think the point is to just save Laura, but to bring her spirit to confront not Sarah, but the spirit inhabiting Sarah which it seems is very likely Judy/Mother.
Cooper knows a lot more than we do about what is happening. That's worth remembering.
It may not make sense to you, but it makes sense to Cooper. Also, in terms of 'the butterly effect', I'm pretty sure Cooper is fully aware of this and in counting on it.
Think of all the tragedies that came out of Laura's death? Twin Peaks' community was shattered. In his mind, not only is Laura the key to stopping Judy, the effects on time would be positive. It just means everything we saw now never happened.
Remember the alternate dimension is after he travels through time. It's an alternative timeline, but one he traveled to, he didn't create it himself.
Cooper knows a lot more than we do about what is happening. That's worth remembering.
It may not make sense to you, but it makes sense to Cooper. Also, in terms of 'the butterly effect', I'm pretty sure Cooper is fully aware of this and in counting on it.
I think Cooper DID know, but doesn't seem to know anything anymore.
I think Cooper DID know, but doesn't seem to know anything anymore.
Indeed. Not sure how deeply you meant that, but everyone seems to agree that Coop lost something of himself in this transition. Was it just that jovial, pie-and-coffee-loving personality that we all love? I mean, he seems to be intellectually okay. He's not Dougie. He still knows the possible consequences of dunking a gun in boiling oil.
But what if he's lost that essential part of real-Coop that "gets" all this? That quality was never completely intellectual, after all. It was partly spiritual and had to do with keeping an unusually open mind to all things totally bizarre. The version of Coop that we're left with may not have what it takes to grasp all this, let alone fix it.
I think Cooper DID know, but doesn't seem to know anything anymore.
Indeed. Not sure how deeply you meant that, but everyone seems to agree that Coop lost something of himself in this transition. Was it just that jovial, pie-and-coffee-loving personality that we all love? I mean, he seems to be intellectually okay. He's not Dougie. He still knows the possible consequences of dunking a gun in boiling oil.
But what if he's lost that essential part of real-Coop that "gets" all this? That quality was never completely intellectual, after all. It was partly spiritual and had to do with keeping an unusually open mind to all things totally bizarre. The version of Coop that we're left with may not have what it takes to grasp all this, let alone fix it.
I read it as him being fully aware of the situation at hand, but increasingly aware that he may be unable to ever truly win and is fighting a losing battle.
I believe his intuition is there still and his comprehension and belief (look how he looks at the telephone pole knowingly), but his enthusiasm for life and boy-scout mentality has gone. His innocence has gone. He knows too much of the darkness now.
It's the awareness of the situation's futility that messes him up. I also don't think the transition did it. I think Laura being ripped from his grasp when he went back did it.
I think E18 aims to be a dark mirror to the reality of the previous 17 episodes and even the original series. In The Return, much of the time we see Cooper split into an evil self and a catatonic simpleton, yet all of the other residents of Twin Peaks are pretty much the same, if not hallow versions of their previous characters. In E18, the situation is reversed somewhat - Cooper as Richard retains the memory and goals of his previous self in the new reality he has entered, and now everyone is different. If Twin Peaks gets picked up by Showtime again or Netflix, would they really spent another season trying to get Cooper and Laura back to the appropriate reality? I wanted more focus on the other aspects of the series, like the experiment/Judy/mothfrog entities, and Audrey Horne's mental state. It just makes me miss the more developed and structured dialogue, content, and style of the original series even more, despite it's flaws.
I think E18 aims to be a dark mirror to the reality of the previous 17 episodes and even the original series. In The Return, much of the time we see Cooper split into an evil self and a catatonic simpleton, yet all of the other residents of Twin Peaks are pretty much the same, if not hallow versions of their previous characters. In E18, the situation is reversed somewhat - Cooper as Richard retains the memory and goals of his previous self in the new reality he has entered, and now everyone is different. If Twin Peaks gets picked up by Showtime again or Netflix, would they really spent another season trying to get Cooper and Laura back to the appropriate reality? I wanted more focus on the other aspects of the series, like the experiment/Judy/mothfrog entities, and Audrey Horne's mental state. It just makes me miss the more developed and structured dialogue, content, and style of the original series even more, despite it's flaws.
I think the differing states of being that Cooper goes through are really hard to understand. You described his Dougie time as a "catatonic simpleton", but we later discovered that the "real/good" Coop was in there the whole time, with total recall of everything that had happened in the past, and also some intellectual and emotional interaction with the people he was dealing with as Dougie, even though we as viewers could not see it. How that compares to the Richard version of Cooper that we ended up with, I have no idea. But I share your frustration with the possibility that if this were to return again somewhere down the line, we'd be dealing with yet more "when will Coop snap out of it?/will Coop ever snap out of it?" stuff. Not a strong selling point for his character's storyline, to me anyway.
I read it as him being fully aware of the situation at hand, but increasingly aware that he may be unable to ever truly win and is fighting a losing battle.
I believe his intuition is there still and his comprehension and belief (look how he looks at the telephone pole knowingly), but his enthusiasm for life and boy-scout mentality has gone. His innocence has gone. He knows too much of the darkness now.
It's the awareness of the situation's futility that messes him up. I also don't think the transition did it. I think Laura being ripped from his grasp when he went back did it.
Not meaning to be a contrarian, but since it's all over but the crying debating, I'm going to disagree with this. I don't think having this mission go awry would rob him of his Coop-ness overnight - especially since he can't really know where things stand when he first starts behaving differently: he hasn't met "Carrie" yet and still seems to think he can find Laura and bring her home.
If it were just profound disillusionment, the Coop we know might be sadder and wiser, but I think he'd keep his essential warmth. He wouldn't be this cold person who doesn't enjoy coffee and demands some waitress's address without a hint of courtesy or reassurance.
At the same time, I'm not sold on the "hybrid-Coop" theories where good Coop has merged with "Mr. C." It could be, but I don't feel that tangible malevolence.
What I see is a Coop who's "crossed over" with all the major building blocks of himself: his appearance, intelligence, memories, G-man reflexes, and overall sense of morality. What's missing is the "glue" that holds it all together and makes him "Coop." Alternatively, you might say it's his soul.
So I do very much think he lost something in the transition. This "Richard" is someone who contains almost all of Coop. All but the best part.
I see where you're coming from buddy, I sure do.
I respectfully disagree, but could very well see your theory being correct.
Fire walk with